The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that was exactly what Jello had in mind. He knew the position he was putting me in when we had our conversation at Anna’s. He was squeezing me. There was no nicer way to put it.
Although I doubted Jello knew anything specific about my meeting this morning with Dollar or about any of the frequent appearances Howard had been making in the conversations Dollar and I had been having recently, he would still no doubt have surmised that Dollar would eventually ask me to help out with Howard’s work again-and then I’d have no choice but to ask Dollar if there was anything behind Jello’s story. Jello had boxed me in with consummate skill. I couldn’t see any path out of the trap he had so carefully constructed, except of course for the one he obviously wanted me to take.
A major attraction for me of running in Lumpini Park was that the joggers there generally included a significant number of tanned, athletic-looking young women pushing gracefully around the lake with firm, confident strides. Just trying to look good for them usually kept me going pretty well. This morning, however, the pickings were slim. I was a little early and the only other runners I saw were two local men pumping doggedly along together without much apparent enthusiasm. I passed them easily. A few minutes later, just after I had crossed a narrow metal bridge over a tiny sliver of water, I glanced back to see how the two men were doing, but I couldn’t see them anymore.
I was still wondering where they had gone when a woman suddenly appeared from a stand of banyan trees near the edge of the lake and fell into stride right next to me. When I glanced over, I did a long, slow take.
It was the woman who had been with Barry Gale at the Foodland.
She was wearing black shorts, a white halter-top, and a black baseball cap that said Oakland Raiders over the light gray bill. She ran easily, gracefully, her feet springing off the grass as if they were touching down on hot coals. Other than describing her features as Asian in a general way, I still couldn’t put a specific place of origin to her. The bone structure was too fine-high, wide cheekbones and a rounded European-looking nose-and now that I studied her closely I could see that none of the separate parts of her face really looked Asian at all except perhaps for the slightly tilted, deep brown eyes.
The woman neither turned her head toward me nor spoke.
Running shoulder to shoulder as we were, I could see that she was actually a little taller than I was, and since I was an even six feet that made her pretty tall for a woman. She was slim, but with distinct muscle definition, and she looked strong. Her complexion was the color of cinnamon, although her arms and legs were darker, burnished by strong sun to the color of cafe au lait, and her smooth skin glistened in the morning light as if it had been polished. She had pulled her shiny black hair back into a ponytail that, in scale with the rest of her, looked two feet long, and it rotated behind her head as she ran like a little propeller driving her forward.
“I was born in Hong Kong, Mr. Shepherd.”
The woman’s eyes stayed forward when she spoke.
“My mother was Chinese, but my father was American. He could never manage the tones in Cantonese, so we always spoke English at home.”
Her accent was half British and half American, and her diction and phrasing were those of someone well-born or well-educated, perhaps both.
“Should I tell you the answer to the other question that everyone asks me?”
“Sure.”
“It’s, no, both of my parents were rather short, actually.”
I chuckled and waited for the woman to go on, but she fell silent again. We ran on like that for a while, not speaking, the rhythmic slapping of our shoes against the grass the only sound marking our progress.
Eventually my curiosity overcame me and I wiped the sweat from my face on the sleeve of my T-shirt.
“This obviously isn’t a coincidence,” I said.
She let a dozen strides go by before she answered. “I thought this might be the best way for me to talk to you without attracting attention.”
Off to our right, three boys who couldn’t have been more than ten were practicing martial arts under the watchful eyes of an old man sitting on a folding stool, a straw hat low over his eyes. Each boy was carefully turned out in a white robe with a belt tied around his waist, and they all stood facing the old man in a neat row, concentrating with remarkable intensity for such small boys.
“Then I figure you’ve got about eight minutes to say whatever it is you want to say,” I said, raggedness creeping into my voice. “After five miles I generally drop dead, and that lamppost we just passed was my four-mile mark.”
One of the boys flung himself into the air and executed what looked to me like a pretty nifty spinning kick. As he did, he loosed an earsplitting shout that caused my companion to swivel her head sharply toward him.
There was another silence after that and this time it began to annoy me.
“Look, lady, if Barry thought sending you around would intimidate me somehow, you can tell him he doesn’t remember me very well.”
“My name’s not ‘lady.’“
“Oh? As I recall, you were a little hazy on that point when you introduced yourself.”
Now my eyes were forward, too, waiting her out.
“My name is Elizabeth Staley. Most people call me Beth.”
I stepped up my pace a bit, running faster as we passed a group of Japanese men who had just appeared from somewhere. They looked like a visiting sumo team, but they moved with remarkable grace and economy, gliding along as easily as marathoners. The woman effortlessly matched me stride for stride.
“Who the hell are you, Beth?”
She glanced at me and said nothing so I gave her another nudge. “I get the feeling you’re a cop of some kind.”
“I work for a private company, Mr. Shepherd. We provide personal security for Mr. Gale.”
“You’re a bodyguard?”
“I am a private security officer.”
I snorted, probably a little louder than really necessary to make my point.
We reached the south side of the park and I started to turn back toward the lake where my usual finishing line was, but Beth pointed in the other direction to where a green wooden picnic table sat empty under some low-hanging gum trees.
“You and I need to talk, Mr. Shepherd.”
“What about?”
“There are some things you need to know.”
“There are a lot of things I need to know, but I doubt you’re going to tell me about any of them.”
Beth smiled and I noticed it was a very nice smile.
“You might be surprised,” she said.
Maybe she was right. Pretty much everything these days seemed to be a surprise to me.
“This way,” Beth went on, pointing again at the picnic table, “if you don’t mind.”
I slowed down and looked at Beth. “Look, before this goes any further-”
But Beth couldn’t hear me. She had already turned away and was running toward the picnic table at the same even pace she had maintained all the way around the lake. She was already halfway there.
I shook my head and followed.
TWENTY TWO
We sat together on top of the table, our feet resting on one of the benches. I could hear the city coming awake out beyond the tree line that surrounded the park.
“What’s this all about, Beth?”
“I’m concerned about you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
“They may know you’re helping Mr. Gale,” she went on after a moment. “They may think you know what happened to the money and come after you.”
“But I’m not helping Barry.”